Colin Wilson

 

Biography

Colin Wilson burst upon the scene in 1956 at the age of 25 with his bestselling book The Outsider. In the course of a remarkable career as an explorer of the human psyche, he has written on a wide range of subjects - archaeology, astronomy, cosmology, Egyptology, crime and the paranormal - and his books continue to be translated into many different languages. He travels widely, holding workshops and lecturing around the world. He is also a regular broadcaster, appearing frequently on television and radio programmes. He lives in Cornwall with his wife

From Atlantis to the Sphinx, Virgin 1996, is a fascinating exploration of the remote depths of history, a groundbreaking attempt to understand how long-forgotten peoples thought, felt and communicated with the universe.

Alien Dawn, Virgin 1998, tells the extraordinary story of the authors' personal quest for a solution to the UFO mystery.

Colin's new book, co-written with Canadian writer Rand Flem-ath, is entitled THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT. It demonstrates persuasively that civilisation is 100,000 years old.  

 

The Lecture...

EARTH' S EARLIEST CIVILISATION AND THE GIZA MERIDIAN

Last year Colin Wilson asked the question - why did Professor Charles Hapgood of Keene University, New Hampshire, come to believe that civilisation was 100,000 years old. To begin with we know that Hapgood and his pupils conducted a long-term study into the maps of the ancient sea kings. Among them was the Piri Reis map of 1513, said to have been constructed from 20 or so pre-existing source maps almost certainly of pre-Columbian origin. What made this map so important is that it shows the Patagonian coastline of South America as well as parts of Antarctica before they were even discovered. Moreover, the Buache map of 1737 shows the ice-bound continent in two halves, exactly as it looked before being engulfed by ice, an event which geologists believe occurred around 300,000 years. Yet Hapgood found evidence to show that some parts of Antarctica were free from ice as late as 4000 BC. This led Hapgood to conclude that an advanced sea-faring culture had mapped the world prior to this age - one perhaps which had existed prior to 7000 BC. He also felt that parts of Antarctica had only become iced up following a displacement of the earth's crust which had shifted the North Pole from its position in the Hudson Bay to its current position in the Arctic Circle sometime around 9000 BC.

These ideas inspired Canadian writers Rose and Rand Flem-ath to conclude that Antarctica was Plato's Atlantis, and that its peoples had been displaced to various parts of the world following Hapgood's proposed crustal displacement. It was a theory argued persuasively in their 1995 book WHEN THE SKY FELL, and taken up, in part at least, by Graham Hancock that same year in his book FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS. In my own lecture I pointed out various good reasons why Antarctica could not have been the role model for Plato's Atlantis. Yet this same theory has been expounded again in Colin Wilson and Rand Flem-ath's new book THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT (Little Brown, London, 2000), which was on sale for the first time that day on the (appropriately named) Atlantis book-stall. Indeed, its proprietors sold out entirely of its 50 copies in a matter of hours.

Colin explained how Rand had come to the conclusion that sea-faring Atlanteans from Antarctica had gone on to establish new colonies in different parts of the world using a pre-existent global grid constructed by themselves. It has Giza as a zero-point meridian and includes sites such as Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, which lies exactly 100 degrees west of Giza; Teotihuacan in Mexico, which is precisely 80 degrees west of Giza, as well as other major sites such as Easter Island. Colin explained that ancient temples and religious structures were built very often on sites which had been sacred to earlier cultures. Yet if these discoveries are valid, it means that the 360-degree division of the earth was devised many thousands of years before the rediscovery of latitude and longitude in the modern era.

Colin spoke also of a book entitled THE COSMIC CODE written by one Maurice Chatelaine. It points out that at the Assyrian palace of Nineveh in Upper Iraq archaeologists discovered an inscription on which was a number with a value in the trillions. Even the modern world has only counted in such high numbers over the last 150 years. Chatelaine worked out that this number represented seconds and that it signified the length of time it takes for all the planets of the solar system to make one complete orbit, implying that this figure was known to the precursors of the Assyrians. Other similar high numbers were found on Maya monuments in the Honduras, and these corresponded exactly to the so-called 'Nineveh number'. Yet the figure for the orbits of the planets displayed by the Nineveh number was not exactly right as the amount shifts gradually over tens of thousands of years. Chatelaine worked out that if the amount given in the Nineveh number was correct, then it must have been calculated by someone measuring the orbits of the planets 64,000 years ago.

I listened to this story and found it difficult to understand how the ancient Assyrians, or whoever they might have obtained this figure from, could have known the length of time it takes every planet to orbit the sun. Even if they had managed to achieve such a feat, why add the total amount of time together and convert it to seconds? What point would there have been in this? Since Chatelaine was using these ideas to propound his belief that the earth was colonised in prehistoric times by extra-terrestrials, I feel we should treat the Nineveh number with some caution, until the figure can be allotted a solution of more terrestrial origin.

Colin eventually discovered exactly who it was who had persuaded Hapgood that civilisation was 100,000 years old. It turned out to be a classical musician and mathematician who had spent many years studying the subjects of landscape geometry and metrology, the origins and usage of measurement. He found evidence from ritual landscapes worldwide of a recurring pattern in design which he concluded could only have been devised some 100,000 years ago by Neanderthal man. His long conversations with Hapgood convinced him that this was the case. Colin was careful not to mention the name of this man as they had fallen out over the use of material relating to the book. Yet having met the guy I can vouch for the fact that he certainly has a unique understanding of the origins of ritual landscapes and simply stunned me by his discoveries at sites in places as diverse as Hawaii, Russia and the United States.

Until recently Neanderthal man had been thought of as a primitive near ancestor of the human race. Yet more and more evidence is now coming to light to show that he made sophisticated breakthroughs in human development. Colin spoke of Neanderthal blast furnaces being found recently in Spain, while in Switzerland there is a cave in which was found 13 bear skulls in two groups - one of seven and the other of six. Paleontologists have dated the cave to 75,000 BC. Psychologist Stan Gooch alluded to the significance of this cave in his groundbreaking book CITIES OF DREAMS, which predicted as early as 1989 that Neanderthal man may indeed have created the first advanced human society. It is even possible that Neanderthal man may have been the first to record the precession of the equinoxes.

Having read CITIES OF DREAMS I would recommend it most thoroughly. I cannot understand why any publisher has not realised its importance and decided to re-publish it. I look forward to reading Colin and Rand's new book THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT as I always enjoy Colin's works.

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